Journey to the Past
by RoriB
Summary: This the story of the girls' lives, from Margo's birth all the way up through their re-adoption. This is my very first FanFic. Please review, constructive criticism is more than welcome, rude comments are not.
1. Chapter 1- First Child

Chapter one- First Child

Lilly-Claire Pearson had just experienced one of the happiest events of most people's lives. She had just given birth to her first child, a healthy, beautiful little girl. It was perfect, or it would have been if it wasn't for the fact that Lilly-Claire was only seventeen years old.

In early November 1999, she and her boyfriend were on what was a seemingly normal movie date. They sat together in the theater holding hands as usual, when he did something that he had never done before. He placed his hand on her thigh, changing the mood completely. It was supposed to be a one time deal. Never in a million years did they expect there to be real consequences. Never did they stop to think that in a month or so, they would be proven dead wrong. So they found themselves leaving the movie early, heading to his house. When they got there, they went straight to the bedroom and made the biggest mistake of her life.

Being pregnant at seventeen was, of course, not an easy thing, especially when the baby's father had disappeared off the face of the earth upon hearing her big news. Joseph Wendell was not only Lilly-Claire's ex-boyfriend of ten moths, but her first love. They had had every class together since kindergarten and inevitably, had been friends ever since. Sometime during their junior year, just as the rest of their friends had predicted since elementary school, they officially became an item. It didn't take long for Lilly-Claire to fall desperately in love. She could spend all day just looking at his sleek black hair and holding his big hands that always gave her a sense of security. She trusted him, and with good reasoning. He was the quiet, sensitive bookish type, seemingly incapable of telling a lie. He was the last person she expected to walk out on her. But he had done just that, leaving her alone and pregnant in the small, conservative town of Cordova, Alabama, where she could hardly bring herself to step outside of her house. And on the rare occasion that she did dare to show her face in public, people would stare, or give her their biggest, fakest smiles and immediately turn to whisper about her when she passed. Eventually, she had had enough and started homeschooling just so that she would never have to face that again.

Those were the worst nine months of her life, but the most painful part wasn't the stares, or the smiles, or even Joseph leaving. The worst part was feeling her baby kick in her belly, knowing that her pregnancy was as far as her relationship with her child would go. At almost eighteen years old, she had a potentially wonderful life ahead of her. She had to graduate high school and college. She had to get married and have a few legitimate children, just like everyone else. The chances of her doing any of that with a baby were slim to none. As much as she loved her baby, she just couldn't keep her.

So she got on the internet and searched for Miss Hattie's Home for Girls, an orphanage in Glennville, Georgia that was supposed to be one of the best in the southeast.

This, she decided, is where the baby's going to live. She called and arranged for a tour of the orphanage and in the last weeks of her pregnancy, she stayed in the town of Glennville, waiting for her baby to arrive.

Finally, that day came. That day was today. The young woman sat in her hospital bed filling out birth certificate forms for Margaret Elise Pearson, born August 4, 2000. She weighed 8 pounds and 2ounces. She flipped to the next form. The one that she had been dreading. She was about to sign away her rights as a parent, in attempt to live a normal life. So that she could go to college in Savannah, an hour away from Glennville, and meet a husband and start the next chapter of her life just as if none of this had ever happened. Suddenly, she just wanted to get it over with. She skimmed the forms, signed what she needed to sign and handed them back to her nurse who took them from her and left the room.

The next day, Lilly-Claire was released from the hospital, never to have held her first child.


	2. Chapter 2- Fantine

Chapter two- Fantine

Brandy and Landon Reynolds had been sitting in happy silence with there new baby girl, taking in their first moments as a perfect family.

Brandy was a small young woman with big brown eyes and big red lips. She was Fantine, with gold on her head and pearls in her teeth. She was joy and modesty incarnate. But mostly, she adored her new child, little Edith Jasmine Reynolds. Within seconds of holding her baby she had fallen madly in love. She looked into the baby's eyes- her first distinct feature. They were the blue-grey ones that used to belong to her mother. Now, that they were her daughter's, they were more beautiful than ever.

Landon was a tall man with red hair and hazel eyes. His family was his life. Four years ago, he had met Brandy. They dated for two years and on May 4, 2000, they were married. Now, on January 14, 2002, he was sitting next to the two most beautiful women in the world. And they were his. His beautiful, perfect new family, and that's how it would be until the day that he died.


	3. Chapter 3- One of Those Girls

Chapter 3- new family

Once again, the Reynolds sat in a dull, white hospital room. Only his visit held no joy for them. Stage four breast cancer had been found in Brandy. Landon was in a daze as he held his sobbing wife. Brandy...cancer...six weeks. That's all that ran through his mind.

Three-year-old Edith looked up, peering under her big pink beanie that her mother had given her. Seeing her mother like that scared her, and when she couldn't stand it any longer, she broke the silence by asking, "What's wrong, mommy?" leaving her mother at a loss for words as to how she was going to tell her child what she knew she had to tell her.

A few months later

Edith sat in her new bedroom with her new roomate. As of today, she was an orphan. In those few months since her mother's death, her father had taken a liking to whiskey. He would drink it all day every day, and Edith not understanding what was happening to him, kept to her room.

That afternoon, Edith's father began drinking the strange stuff that made him go crazy, and sometimes do stuff like hit her for absolutely no reason. She watched him keep drinking the strange stuff, thankfully too occupied to pay any attention to her. She saw him walk out the door and get into his car and drive off. He hadn't even made it to the end of the block when he slammed into a giant oak tree, killing him instantly. The next thing she knew, the police were there taking her to Miss Hattie's, a small orphanage that she had passed almost every day with her mother who would alway shake her head and look at the girls, some the same age as her own child, some of whom had never known a real family. It always made her think of how lucky she was to be alive to look after her family. Edith wondered what her mother was thinking now that she was one of those girls.

The orphanage was a clean place with children who looked more or less normal. She took an immediate disliking to Miss Hattie, the squat woman who ran the place. Her fake smile may have convinced the officers, but it definitely didn't convince Edith. Her new roomate was a girl named Margo Pearson, who was two years older than she was and had been living there her whole life. Both girls were a bit shy, but when they both came out of their shell, a new friendship began budding immediately. It was strange for both girls who had never really had a friend before, but it was something that they could definitely get used to.

Meanwhile

Eight months ago, Vanessa Pazella had come out of the bathroom of her small house trembling. Her worst fears were confirmed. She was pregnant with a baby she couldn't keep, because their little border town in Mexico was no place for children. So in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, the couple had travelled to Glennville, Georgia to stay with Vanessa's distant cousins with no intention of returning to Mexico until after the baby was born.

That's where they were now. In Glennville, Georgia on their way to Miss Hattie's with their little girl. The ride there took forever, but at the same time, it went by way too fast. The young couple did not want to leave their baby, but knowing it was the right thing to do, they placed the little bundle of blankets on the top step of the local orphanage and drove off, not allowing themselves to look back. Agnes Vanessa Carmen Pazella layed there for the rest of the night waiting to start her life as an orphan.


	4. Chapter 4- Sisterhood

Chapter 4-Sisterhood

Growing up in an orphanage like Miss Hattie's was hard. Every day, the girls would get up at around three in the morning to clean the whole first floor of the orphanage. If they didn't, they wouldn't get fed breakfast or lunch. After lunch, they were to spend the rest of the day cleaning the second floor of the orphanage. If they failed to do that, they would get no dinner. Throughout the day, Miss Hattie would either sit at her desk and do nothing, or amuse herself by supervising the girls' work and finding any reason she could to punish them. At the end of the day, at least one person was sent to the box of shame.

Most girls there had no friends. They were all well acquainted with one another, but none of the girls had any real friendships. Except three: Margo Pearson, Edith Reynolds, and Agnes Pezella. Margo had lived in the orphanage her whole life and having had to practically raise herself, she had grown up with no childhood. Edith had come to the orphanage at three years old and Agnes, like Margo, was placed in the orphanage at birth. Over time, the three roomates had formed a friendship, that became deeper and deeper until finally uniting them in a sort of sisterhood. Everyone at the orphanage, including themselves, had forgotten that they were not related.

Very early one morning, the three girls were still wide awake. Margo, now nine years old, and Edith, now seven years old were both sitting up in their own bed. Four year old Agnes was sitting in the eldest's lap. They had been up all night giggling before Edith asked something that turned the whole conversation more serious:

" How did I get here?" She inquired. She had some vague memories of her mother's funeral and of some of her father's drunken nights, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember their deaths. In fact, not many of the girls at the orphanage even knew their full names, because Miss Hattie refused to let them look at their files, or birth certificates, or anything that would give them any clues about their past.

Margo thought for a minute, remembering the afternoon that Edith had come. She had overheard some of Miss Hattie's conversation with the police. Enough to know that Edith's mother had cancer, and that shortly after, her father was killed drinking and driving. "Well," she hesitated, "your mother was sick. Really sick and there was nothing they could do about it. Your father died an a car accident." Luckily, that seemed to satisfy Edith. Margo knew the whole story, but she just didn't know how to tell her.

" What about you, how did you get here?" Edith inquired further. Margo wished she knew. All she did know was that she had been living here all her life.

"I don't know."

"Oh."

She didn't even bother asking about Agnes. Both of them remembered waking up on Edith's first day at the orphanage to Miss Hattie grumbling about more work. They both assumed that it was because of Edith until they were introduced to their new roomate, Agnes, a newborn. She had just showed up on the front steps the previous night with nothing but a note with her name on it. Even Miss Hattie had limited knowledge of little Agnes's past. All she knew was her name and her assumed birthday. As for the rest of the girls, they only knew her first name.

The room was silent for a few minutes before Agnes randomly piped up, " What if one of us gets adopted?" None of the girls had really thought about that. They had been living there for countless years. Lots of couples had considered them, but in the end, they stayed at the orphanage. There was only one way Margo could answer Agnes's question,

" That's not going to happen. One day, we will get adopted. Together. Let's promise each other that. Right now." Margo held out both pinkies to her sisters. They hooked their own pinkies around Margo's and then Edith and Agnes joined theirs.

Yet again, silence filled the room until Agnes burst into one of her random, made-up songs about unicorns.

" Uni-uni-uni-corns are the best things ever..."

Margo and Edith looked at each other with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. With that, the serious part of their conversation was over, leaving them to giggle for the rest of the night, just as they had been. Eventually, it was time for the rest of the orphanage to wake up and Miss Hattie barged into their room to wake them up, only to find them already wide awake. Naturally, they were sentenced to the remainder of the week in the box of shame, but none of the girls, not even little Agnes, seemed to care one bit. That night's conversation and the promise that had come out of it, was worth it.


	5. Chapter 5- The Gru Family

Chapter 5- The Gru Family

Who knew that a life could change so much in just a matter of weeks? Not so long ago, three girls lived in a sad orphanage, knowing close to nothing about themselves. Now, they lived in a real home with a real parent who really loved them. Just that afternoon, he had all but jumped to his death for them, and he would do it again in a heartbeat.

Margaret Elise Pearson was the eldest of her sisters. Her mother was just a child herself when she had Margo, and thinking it best for them both, she had made arrangements for her daughter to go to Miss Hattie's as soon as she was born. Lilyana Pearson Barnes was her birth mother who now lived an hour away in Savannah, Georgia where she owned a dance studio and was married and had four children, three boys and one girl. Her father, Joseph Wendell, lived in Montgomery, Alabama where he had been married twice with two children from each marriage.

Edith Jasmine Reynolds had lived in a normal, perfect family when her mother, Brandy was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She lived for another month after the diagnosis. Her father then became an alchoholic and unintentionally killed himself driving while drunk. At three years old, she was taken to Miss Hattie's.

It was assumed that Agnes Vanessa Carmen Pazella was born on July 25, 2005, the day she was left in front of the orphanage by a presumably hispanic couple. There was no way of knowing anything beyond that.

But on that night of May 12,2010, Margaret Elise Pearson, Edith Jasmine Reynolds, and Agnes Vanessa Carmen Pazella walked into Glennvile City Hall accompanied by their father. About an hour later, Margaret Elise, Edith Jasmine and Agnes Vanessa Carmen Gru walked out, extremely happy. It was completely official. Felonius Gru was their father. Marlena Gru was their grandmother. Dr. Nefario was a kind of cross between an uncle and a grandfather, and Gru's cousins were their cousins. And in the end the girls had kept their promise. They were still sisters, not only by the friendship they had formed back at the orphanage, but by law.

Just that afternoon, the girls had been through things that most people would never go through in their lifetime. They had been kidnapped by an evil supervillian and held captive as a way of threatening their ex-father. Not thinking that he would come for them, they lost hope. When he did come for them, they were relieved beyond belief only to have their hopes crushed once again when their captor flew off with them. Incredibly enough, their father had persisted and was waiting for them below to jump to him.

The next thirty seconds was extremely eventful, but there's no need to go into all that. It's all over now. At the end of the day, they had jumped and Mr. Gru had caught them. And now, they had a family, they had each other, and most importantly, they had a wildly unorthodox, perfect, loving home.


End file.
